Love Alone
by wmmhija
Summary: RENTfic--Roger's dying. Series of eighteen related shorts inspired by the poetry of Paul Monette.
1. notes

Love can not fill the thickening blood with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Author's Notes for _Love Alone_:

Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I feel as if the inspiration for this series deserves some explanation.  The vignettes that follow are all inspired by the poetry of Paul Monette.  All epigraphs are taken from _Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog_, which was written in the months following the death of his lover of twelve years from AIDS in 1986.  Paul Monette himself died in 1995.

Herein lie some vague references to things found in much of Monette's writing (here I shall plug _Borrowed Time_ and _Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story_).  Also within are some of my own ideas (I did write it, yo).  Please remember that I've shamelessly romanticized his work and attributed it to the characters of _RENT_.  AIDS isn't pretty.  _Love Alone_ is not pretty.  It's angry and frustrated and painful and rightfully so.  It's about death and disease and surviving in the face of both, even when you don't want to.

I apologize to Mr. Monette, who just might be spinning in his grave right now, but that's what he gets for writing achingly beautiful poetry about a man named Roger.

Disclaimer: If you haven't figured this out already, the poetry isn't mine.  Oh, and neither are Mark and Roger and the others.  Let's hope Jonathon Larson isn't rolling in his grave, too, because I have guilt enough as it is.

PS: Though they're short, I'm going to post these one by one, so each vignette can stand alone.  There are eighteen total, and they're already completed, so it shouldn't be long till it's all up.  So without further distraction, go to!  Enjoy!

~Annie


	2. dust

I'd go

around the house with a rag of ammonia

wiping, wiping crazed as a housewife on _Let's_

_Make a Deal_ the deal being PLEASE DON'T MAKE

HIM SICK AGAIN

~ "The Worrying"

When I started coughing, you freaked out.  I just barely calmed you down with a casual, "It's probably just the dust."  God, I wish I hadn't said that to you, Mark.  You force fed me some cough medicine then and set to work cleaning our flat.

Within a few days, the cough had worsened, then disappeared completely.  The dust rag and ammonia, however, have not.  You've apparently realized we don't live in the cleanest place in the world.  Doorknobs, the phone, anything touched with human hands gets doused several times daily with Lysol.  You give reproving looks to someone coughing across the room when we go eat at the Life.

"I think if I worry enough," you say when I ask what the sudden obsessive neatness is all about, "you'll be okay."

"I'll be okay without you channeling your mother."  That earns me my first real Mark smile since that first cough a week and a half ago.  Don't think I don't notice you still cleaning, though.

In all honesty, I kind of wish you wouldn't.  I know you mean well, but you're reminding me of what's ahead.  I rarely even think about being sick these days.  I have you and I have my health.  My life is perfect right now, right this very minute, so why worry about the future?

The only time I seriously consider AIDS is when I wake every morning.  I dutifully feel my bed sheets for sweat before I retreat into the bathroom to check my body for bruises or lesions, my armpits for lumps, my tongue for fuzz.  I consider it then because I know one day I'm going to find something.  One day I'll start coughing again and there won't be any dust left to blame it on.


	3. here

through it all when I'd cling beside you sobbing

you'd shrug it off with the quietest _I'm still_

_here_

~ "Here"

I had a doctor's appointment today.  My T-Cells are down and my viral load is up.  "Here's a new prescription to add to your dailies, Mr. Davis, and try to limit your physical activity for a few days."  New day, new doctor, new pills, same old thing.

You and I walked home.  You didn't say anything, Mark, but you didn't have to.  You held onto my sleeve like a lifeline and that said enough.  I dropped you off at our doorstep, and when I didn't follow you in you gave me a questioning look.  "I'm gonna go…" I said and waved the prescription at you.  You just nodded and walked upstairs without a word.

When I returned later, not looking forward to the week of nausea this new medication was sure to bring, I found you crying on the floor, jacket half hanging off your hunched and heaving back.  You latched on to me and kept sobbing.

"I don't know if I can do it," you said, tightening your grip on me.  "I don't know if I can lose you."

And now you've finally spoken and I'm somewhat stunned, unsure what to do, so I wrap you up in my arms and hold you till the tears subside.  "I'm still here," I whisper to you, and kiss your hairline.  "I'm still here."


	4. start

will you please forgive me this

that every time I opened a box of anything

Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was

the worst I'd think will you still be here

when the box is empty Rog

~ "Here"

If your coughing doesn't stop, Rog, I'm putting you in the hospital.  Truthfully, I think you should be there now, but you know all too well how to make me do what you want, and what you want is to be at home.  But this is it.  You get through the weekend, and if there's no improvement, your ass is hospitalized.  Bitching's not gonna change my mind either.  I need to be doing something, trying to make you better, cause if I'm not, if I can't make you healthy, I can only assume this is the beginning of the end, and it's NOT.

Already it's starting to creep into the back of my mind and I hate it.  Thoughts about your death keep making themselves known, popping up whenever I'm not distracting myself with something else.  It's the worst when I open something, anything.  Every jug of milk, every box of cereal, every bottle of AZT, I wonder, "Which will live longer?  Roger or Cap'n Crunch?" and boy isn't that a shitty way of living.

So you've got three days to turn it around, Roger, because this is not the start of something and I refuse to let it be.  I _will_ _not_ stand here and watch you die.  Someone's got to do something and that person is me.


	5. someone

as you used to say in your cranked up bed

playfully astonished _But we're the same person_

_when did that happen_

~ "The Very Same"

Hospital Stay Day #1:

Damn it, Mark, I can't believe you dragged me here. This is ridiculous. It must be a busy day here, or something, cause I'm currently in a double with a guy named César. Just until later today, when a room opens. They don't keep AIDS patients together—too risky. I tell you this is a sign. We're not supposed to be here. "You can take your signs and shove them up your sick ass," you say, not even looking up from the magazine in your hands. "We should have been here two weeks ago." That settles the matter once and for all, and from behind the curtain next to me, César chuckles.

Hospital Stay Day #6:

César ended up across the hall, which is cool. You and I go visit him, since I still feel pretty okay, but the chemo for his KS wears him down. I don't really make new friends all that easily, especially these days, but César's a good guy. It's nice to have someone to talk to when you're not around, and I know you do the same when I'm with the doctors and they kick you out. César's the last of his group of friends; they've all died already. At 28, he's the oldest to live. His parents still live in Uruguay, so no one comes to see him. Have I mentioned lately, Mark, how grateful I am for you?

Hospital Stay Day #13:

César hobbled over here, leaning on his walker, and said he thought I could use some company since you'd gone. I offer him the chair next to me and smile to force myself from frowning at his appearance. The last two weeks have been rough on him. Unlike me, who's had years of relative health and is just now entering the world of opportunistic infections, César's been at this for a while. I don't know if he told you this, Mark, but the biggest lesion on his leg, the one on his inner thigh, has been there for fourteen months. I can't even imagine. César asks me to tell him how you and I met, cause we remind him of him and his best friend Paul. I tell him, because it makes him smile, and in this place we need all the smiles we can get.

Hospital Stay Day #17:

We're over in César's room and you just finished telling him one of the multitudes of Mark-and-Roger-disagree-on-something stories we have. You tell him we're two separate people, really nothing alike, but somehow we've always made this friendship work. César tilts his head and says, "Really?  I'd say you're pretty much the same person," and you chuckle, because it's amusing to think that the filmmaker and the musician are at all similar. But I think how much we've rubbed off on each other—I see so much of the world around me now, and you've learned to stand up for yourself, among other things—and I laugh. "Yeah, when did that happen?" I wonder out loud and you smile. We leave and César takes a nap. Says we wore him out laughing, and when we apologize, he says it's okay, it's always good to have someone to laugh with.

Hospital Stay Day #21:

César died last night. I worry about how to tell you, but when you see my face, you know. You sit on the edge of my stupid cranked-up hospital bed and we stare out the open door across the hall to Room 1027, now empty and sterile. Somewhere I think I hear laughing.


	6. real

lost at the front door still I bawl _I'm home Rog_

not that I really expect to meet you

~ "The House On King's Road"

Every couple of days they force me home, telling me to get out of the hospital for a while, get some fresh air.  And every time the whole trip is this mindless, repetitive sequence of nothing I'm not even sure is really real.  Like maybe it's one of my movies or one of the crazy dreams I have when I fall asleep at your bedside.  I walk home, though it's neither the shortest nor the safest trip, trudge up the stairs, unlock the door, and as I push it open I choke out a half-hearted, "I'm home, Rog."

You're not there, I know.  I just left you alone in Room 1028.  But it's habit and it reminds me that just because you're not _here_, you're still here.  You're sitting on the one clear section of the table strumming your guitar.  You're digging through the fridge trying to find something to put on stale bread.  You're punching the wall in an attempt to dull the pain of heroin withdrawal.  You're stretched out on the lumpy sofa making fun of my choice of movie.

After you go, they'll want me to leave.  Joanne is already dropping less-than-subtle hints about me moving into her spare room.  Sometimes I consider it.  Sometimes I think I'm going to have to leave the whole city, not just this loft, to truly escape all the memories, because you're everywhere and it's almost too much.  Everything I look at is a reminder that I'm losing my very best friend and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

But I'm not leaving.  They will take me out feet first.  11th and Avenue B is our home, Roger, and the only home I've ever known.  And if staying means spending the rest of my life in constant reminder of what's happened, at least I'll know it was real, because even when you're not here, Roger, you're everywhere.


	7. remember

my friend and I we laughed for years on end

and the dark fell anyway

~ "Manifesto"

It's late and I've slept too much lately, so I crawl out of my bed, hike my pajama bottoms up and head for the door.  I shuffle past the nurses' station with a quick wave.  It's an off night, so none of the nurses on duty know me well enough for me to listen to them when they tell me to get back in bed.  They've labeled me "difficult" anyway, so what do I care?  Let me do what I want.

As I step onto the elevator, I think how pissed at me you'd be, Mark, and of course I'd listen to you, but you're not here right now.  Collins forced you home after dinner tonight, as if you tossing and turning at home in bed and me being uncomfortable and alone in the hospital is going to benefit anyone involved.  You'd think they'd understand that I need you here, and you need to be here.  We're keeping each other sane through all of this.

I step off the elevator and into the lobby.  I'm not leaving, just heading for a chair by the door for a change of pace.  I plop down in one and no sooner am I there than I see two kids, a girl and a boy, no older than seventeen.  They're high as a kite, and the boy is laughing about something.  I've been out of the game for a while, but I'd say the girl's on something pretty weak, pot and a couple beers maybe.  But the boy screams heroin at me, and I shake my head sadly.  Mark, I remember being that kid and look where I am now.  In the fucking hospital dying because of my own stupid mistakes.

The girl, I note, seems worried about something, some kid named Jonas, who I assume is the reason they're here at 2am.  Good.  She should be worried.  She should be scared out of her mind.  The boy, however, seems pretty amused by whatever is going on.  Heroin'll do that to you.  He's just sitting there with the same shit-eating grin I used to wear, acting like nothing can touch him.  Jesus, Mark, I just want to go over there and shake him, hit him, smack some god damned sense into his head.  I want to scream, "Look at me!  This is where you're headed, kid.  Wandering around a hospital at god knows what hour in your ratty slippers and an IV hanging out your arm."

I remember being him, Mark, I really do.  Back when you'd beg me to stop and I'd just laugh you off.  Life was just a big joke, I thought, one big fucking joke.  Well, I'll tell you what.  It's got a killer punch line.


	8. left

I think it's the left side closest

to you in bed I get up and half of me doesn't

work

~ "Half Life"

You know, Roger, I think that maybe I can't really live here without you.  Half of me is…not right somehow.  I feel like it's not working the way it should be.  It's kind of like losing the feeling in your foot.  There's that stage between pins and needles and complete numbness where you can't feel anything but it hurts anyway.  Half of me hurts anyway.

I feel kind of stupid saying this, but I think it's my left side.  How lame is that, 'my left side'?  But I woke up this morning after just a few hours fitful rest, and I laid there for a moment and realized that it _was_ my left side.

Your room is to the left of mine.  I usually wake to you shuffling around over there, cursing underneath your breath when you trip over your dirty laundry.  It's silent now as I roll out of bed to get dressed.

You sit on the left end of the table.  I'll pull up a chair at one end and pick absently at a script while you pick absently at a song.  We can sit there and work for hours.  I glance briefly at the abandoned papers sitting on the table as I head out the door.

You walk on my left side down the street.  I stick close to the curb and let you navigate the crowds, bumping shoulders with people as we make our way around town.  A woman knocks into me now and I just roll my eyes and move on.

When I push the door to your hospital room open, you smile dopily at me and I see you've gotten your morning meds.  They always make you a little loopy for a while.  You mumble on about some nurse's kid while I pull a chair up along your right side and for the first time since 7:30 last night, I feel everything again.


	9. you

I remember clearly deciding not to see

anymore myself this out of sheer protest

. . .

you stop peer impish intent as a hawk

and say _I see you_ just like that

~ "Your Sightless Days"

Last night I went blind.  Two days after they let me out of the hospital, I go fucking _blind_, and here I am again.  Something to do with my cornea or my retina or something.  I don't even care anymore.  All I heard was that they could fix my right eye, and probably my left.  Surgery's this afternoon, so I just have to deal until then.

You're sitting next to me, Mark, like usual, and you're chatting on to fill the silence, like usual.  It's strange to be able to hear your voice, smell your soap, feel your hand on mine, reassuring me you're there, because even though I have all this evidence, I can't _see_ you.

You stop talking for a moment, and in the silence that follows, I think I must react in some way, because you tell me you're trying to think of something else to say, so just hold on one damn minute.  No, I say, it's not that.  For the first time, I note the absence of a familiar whirring.  Your camera, I say.  I noticed before that it was making fewer and fewer appearances, but it's always been around.  I now realize it's been gone for several days.  Since my vision started going blurry maybe.

"Why?" I ask.

"I don't want to see if you can't," you say.

You're not filming and I can't believe it.  I won't.  You have to film, Mark.  If you give up, what hope do I have?  I turn my head towards where I know you to be and _focus_.  This is important, I think, for both of us.  If I squint enough…

"I see you."

"Roger," you start, admonishing.

"You're wearing…" I squint harder, and I don't know if I actually see anything or if I just think I do.  "You're wearing green."

"Roger!" you say again, this time astonished.

I'm sure I look smug, and for the moment, everything feels normal again.  "When I'm in surgery, go home and get it.  The first thing I want to see is that damned camera in my face."

You start to protest.

"Don't give up," I say.

You're quiet for a moment.  "I won't," you promise.

I nod my approval.  "You're a stubborn fucker."

"Learned from the best," you say, then chuckle.  "Seeing things when you're blind."

Just you, Mark.  Just you.


	10. breaking

but wouldn't cry then no choked it because

they all said hearing was the last to go

~ "No Goodbyes"

I won't cry.  I can't.  If I start, I won't stop and you'll hear me breaking.  You're going through so much, Roger, and you already spend too much time worrying about me.  I can't do it.  I can't cry.

It's getting to me, though.  I don't know how much longer I can sit here on this wooden plank the hospital calls a chair and listen to your lungs crackle with fluid as you breathe in your sleep.  How many more times I can watch you flinch as some inept intern jabs you with a needle.  How many more times I can smile through Joanne's sympathetic looks, Maureen's quiet sobs, Collins' fading energy, Benny's offered charity before I just snap and I scream and yell and throw my camera into the wall, the broken pieces shattering and falling to the floor with a satisfying crash.

You wake and lay a calloused hand over mine.  I didn't know I had been gripping the bed sheet so hard, and I suddenly realize how sore my jaw is from clenching it so tightly.  I look up into your face, and your blue eyes are strangely large, or maybe that's just how sallow you've become.  You whisper softly, "Let it go, Mark," and I begin to cry.


	11. set

the smallest thing will trigger it like plastique

and roar me back burning like phosphorus flesh

running like wax

~ "The Losing Side"

You admit to mourning already, but only after I mention the wet spots on your shirt.  You're not exactly thrilled with it, but you say the strangest things set you off and there's no stopping it then.

The current bout of tears started when Krista, a nurse with a great sense of humor and a truckload of children, brought in lunch and noted the special lime jello, instead of the usual cherry.  When I told her lime was my favorite, you excused yourself quickly, then returned a minute later, cheeks still flushed from crying.  When I asked, you said it reminded you of the first and only party we ever tried to have at the loft.  We argued in the store for ten minutes over what kind of jello to buy for shooters.  You wanted orange, but I insisted on lime.  You only relented because I pinned you down and sat on you right in the middle of the Food Emporium.  You, me, and Collins ended up doing all the shots alone on the roof the next night, no party, just three very drunk guys with green tongues.  Benny had to help us back down the fire escape.

"Stupid shit like that," you say sets you off, even though I don't think it's stupid at all.  You throw out a few other examples: certain subway lines, _La Boheme_ playing over on Broadway, a flyer for the first club I ever dragged you to.

Sometimes, you say, you cry just because I've made it through another day and you're so grateful you don't know what else to do.  I understand, Mark, believe me, I do.  When you cry all day, an afternoon can be frightfully long term.


	12. counting

I watched you suffer the six

spinal three broncs your bone marrow sipped by

a ten-inch needle till you had enough numbers

to stump an algebra class

~ "Current Status 1/22/87"

Oh, Roger, when did this get so out of hand?  So complicated?  So completely and totally incomprehensible?  When did our lives become dictated by strings of numbers and letters that mean practically nothing?

AZT, 3TC, ddI, d4T, HIVID

PCP, CMV, KS, MAC

HCV, PWA, HIV

T-4 is 465 as of 12/8.

Why can't they call Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor and NucliSens HIV-1 QT "viral load tests" instead of trying to confuse us to distract from the bad news?  What the fuck is Nucleoside/tide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor anyway, and how exactly is it different from a _non_-Nucleoside/tide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor?

Ribavirin, acyclovir, dalmane, sinequan, xylocane, and everyone's favorite silver bullet azidothymidine.

T-4 216 1/28

Why is the treatment more painful than the disease?  Bronchoscopes, spinal taps, bone marrow transplants.  What are they doing to you, Rog?  Is this helping at all?  HIV is not an identity, they say.  T-Cells are not the only measure of inevitability, they say.  Then why are we still counting?  Why are you still getting sick?  What is all this for if YOU'RE NOT GETTING BETTER?

6 pills

13

24

52 pills a day

Plus 4 IVs and 3 needles

T-4 57 3/1

I have no idea what's going on.


	13. enough

I want the rest of me to be the rest of you

~ "Half Life"

It's hard to see you get sicker and sicker, Rog, as I always knew it would be.  There's nothing worse than watching a loved one fade, and that's exactly what AIDS does to a person: makes them fade away.  I look back on footage I shot just a few months ago, and you're already so different.  You're half of what you used to be, thin and pale, but you're still smiling just for me.

As you die, part of me dies with you.  With every pound you shed, every hack that wracks your body, every bruise that just won't fade, a little more of me goes.

I wish that I could give you my body, my self, my very being.  I wish that I could offer up what is left of me, flawed though it is, hand it to you on a silver platter, and have that be enough to make you well.  I would gladly give all of me for just half of you.  All I have to offer is myself, but all I have isn't enough.


	14. never

one I never told you a month after

the verdict I came in the bathroom looked

around the shower door and you were dead

~ "Dreaming of You"

I sit here and chat with you for a while longer, even though you tell me I should get some sleep.  I brush you off.  I don't need much rest these days.

The little sleep I do get is wracked with dreams of you, Rog.  You hacking up blood, you in some sort of fast-forward decay into nothingness, you lying in a coffin, things I imagine are all pretty normal to dream at a time like this.  Some I tell you about, some I don't.

One I'll never tell you about, but I've had it repeatedly since April killed herself.  I enter the loft and it's so quiet.  I call out to you, check your bedroom, then mine, but I can't find you.  Then I see a light on in the bathroom and I panic, because it's JUST like with April.  I know what I'm going to find, and I don't want to see you, but my feet move me towards the door anyway.  I grasp the knob in slow motion, this whole scene disgustingly like a movie, pull the door open, and my mouth falls open in a silent scream for help.  There's so much blood, Roger.  Everything I see is red and white, blood and skin.  And it's too late to save you, but I grab your body anyway and hold on for dear life, crying for help, but help never comes.

You tell me I need rest, but I brush you off.  Instead, I sit here and talk to you, because I don't need sleep that badly.


	15. play

a man who could write about

anything

~ "New Year's At Lawrence's Grave"

You used to tell me I could write a song about anything and make it interesting.  "Passionate" is really what you said.  "Roger, how do you do it?  You could write a song about my grandmother's underwear and make it passionate."  I reminded you that I had once, drunk and giggling like a fool.  You looked annoyed and said, "I know, I remember," but cracked up a second later, remembering the chorus that went something like, "Mark's grandma wears pink panties/ isn't that a riot?/ Cindy still wears footie jammies/ God, she's fucking hot."  It only sort of rhymed, but it had, I thought, a nice chord progression.  Anyway, you used to call me passionate all the time.  Used to, because I'm not allowed to play anymore.  I can't sing, even if I wanted to.

Most days now, since my seemingly chronic PCP flared up again, I'm on a respirator, which helps me breath, but in the process blocks my vocal cords from use.  I can't even speak.  So no singing.  My IVs get pulled out when I try and play my Fender.  The nurses finally got sick of replacing them and forbade me from playing.  So no music either.

I make you talk all the time now, cause it's too quiet otherwise.  I hate silence, you know that, and if no one's talking, the only thing to focus on is the steady rise and fall of the respirator and the beep beep beeping of machines.  I'd rather take silence.

It's frustrating as all hell.  I've only ever been good at one thing in my whole life and it's been taken away from me.  So what do I do now?  For Christ's sake, I'm a musician.  I can't take all this quiet.  In the interest of keeping me sane, you entertain me with the world outside my hospital room.  Why Maureen and Joanne currently aren't speaking, what messages are on our machine at home, every piece of footage you've shot in the last six months.  You talk for me because I can't.

Eventually, you say you've got nothing left.  You've been talking for two weeks straight and there's nothing else to talk about, unless I really want to hear about how you picked gum off your sneakers for an hour last night.  I shrug, unable to say it's okay.  I'm surprised you've even made it this far, but then again, you've always seen more in the world than most people.

The machines beep for a long moment before you reach under my bed.  I give you a questioning look, and when you pull out my guitar my eyes go wide.  I sent you home with that the other day; I was too damned sick of looking at it and not being able to play.  You strum out a few random chords quietly, nothing too complex.  Guitars are not your thing, but you've picked up some stuff over the years.  You idly pluck away, playing nothing really, but it's okay, because I'm pretty sure you could play anything and make it interesting.  You're playing for me, and that's all the passion you need.


	16. favorite

are you easy

my stolen pal what do you need is it

sleep like sleep you want a pillow a cool

drink oh my one safe place there must be

something just say what it is and it's yours

~ "The Worrying"

I fussed and whined and begged and pleaded for a week solid, Mark, before I convinced you, but it was worth it.  For feeling like I'm about to die, I feel fantastic.  I'm at home, body blissfully clear of all chemicals for the first time since I was 15.

I never wanted to die in a hospital and certainly not while hooked up to some machine on thirty kinds of medication.  You're not thrilled, I know, wanting every day it would bring me, but that's all it'd be, Mark—a few more days.  Trust me, you can feel these sorts of things.  And if it's the difference between another week in that damned hospital or a weekend on the sofa, I choose the sofa.

But we're not on the sofa, are we?  I dragged you up here to the roof.  Well, I nagged and you carefully helped me up the fire escape step by step, but let's not split hairs.

I never used to see why you liked coming up here.  You said it was a safe haven for you, something I didn't get until after I went clean.  I think it calmed me down enough to appreciate the unique beauty of New York City, as well as the need for a safe place amidst all the chaos.  Up here, we sit and watch taxis driving, people walking, the drug dealer dealing, the homeless loitering.  It's no Eden, but it's got its own charm.  It's home.

I'm sitting here plucking my Fender for the first time in weeks, and you and I are making up stories about the people below us like we've been doing forever.  I'm more content now than I've been in years.

"Mark?"

"Hmm?" you say.

"These were always my favorite times."

You give me a watery smile.  "I know, Rog."

I pause, unsure if I should continue, but I do anyway.  "You'll be okay."

You shrug.  "Eventually, I guess."

"Thank you for being so great through all this."  You have been, you know, always making sure I was happy, comfortable, taken care of.  "I love you.  I never deserved a friend like you."

"Oh shut up, Rog," you say and wipe away a few errant tears.  You say nothing else for a long minute and I think we've gone back to the usual quiet of rooftop gazing.  Then you whisper, "I'm gonna miss you."

"Yeah," I say and ignore my own tears.  "I'm gonna miss you, too."


	17. again

every day is the last you will ever do

something learn to turn your back complete

as you walk the other way say _never again_

~ "Last Day At Molera Beach"

One of the hardest parts about all this, I think, is the idea that every time I do something or see someone, it could be the last time.  I might never do it again.  It's definitely the strangest thing about dying, something I'll never get used to.

And what really makes it hard, what makes me angry, is I have no choice.  It's not like quitting heroin; when I said, "That's it, never again," it was my own decision.  This is being forced from me.  Again is being ripped away, making me change my habits.  No more 'See you tomorrow's or 'Talk to you later's or 'I'll see you again soon' cause I'm not guaranteed again will ever come.

I'm not exactly sure how to say this to you, but I think you understand.  You've always been good at that, Mark.  Just looking at me and understanding whatever it is I can't put into words.

So when we slowly round our block for the daily walk we've begun making, you let me take my time, seeing New York City one more time.  When we leave somewhere, you let me make sure I say goodbye to everyone, even when I'm going to see them in a few hours.  When I play my guitar while you poke at film footage, you let me sigh sadly and wonder if this is just another time or if I'll never do it again.


	18. gone

_It's okay Rog_

_we'll turn it around you'll be here again by_

_morning_ and I was wrong and lost you

like a diamond in the sea

~ "Three Rings"

It's been a week and a half since you left the hospital for good.  You're getting both better and worse.  You're in higher and higher spirits, for which I'm thankful, but your health is fading fast.  It's all just so fast.

You're weak, thin, slow, and it's a drastic change from the Roger Davis of old, but you don't seem to mind.  You shuffle carefully around and threaten to beat me with your cane, though you (thankfully) don't use one, and act like everything's fine.

We've been talking about things lately, things neither of us were ready for before, but if we don't talk now, we never will.  You told me about pulling everyone aside and saying goodbye.  You told me you were more scared going through withdrawal than this.  You told me you wished your mother wasn't so afraid.  You told me that even though PCP isn't the most fun of opportunistic infections, you were grateful you'd avoided Kaposi's Sarcoma.

That I could definitely understand.  We'd both seen KS at its worst.  Great purple-black lesions all over that just won't go away.  Angel had KS on her legs, something no one but Collins knew until it had started to spread and she checked herself into the hospital.  She had always covered it with tights or jeans and carried on like usual.  Angel was the best example of living through death I've ever seen.  You told me last night that you thought she was sent to us to teach us not to fear death.  It was the closest to religious I've ever heard from you.

I said goodnight then, setting a glass of water next to your bed before heading to my room.

"Night, Rog," I said in the doorway.  "See you in the morning."

"Mmm," was all you said for a moment.  "I love you, Mark."

"I love you, too, Rog."

And now it's the next morning and I'm standing in the doorway again and I have been for about ten minutes, but my feet just won't move.  You're gone.  I woke up and I knew it.  I ran over here and sure enough there you are, lying peacefully on your bed.

I stand there for a while longer, unsure of how much time passes, and when the buzzing in my ears fades to a dull roar, I note the small smile on your face and I'm glad you weren't afraid.


	19. fade

a willingness

to live in clips dispensable as curls

of footage on the cutting-room floor quick

close-up cut to the chase what did I miss

it's all middle over before you know it

freeze frame on us in the park end credits

~ "Dreaming of You"

Somehow I always knew I'd end up here, Rog.  Sitting on the floor alone next to my beat-up projector watching old footage I shot of our broken family of friends flash on the wall you painted white for this very purpose.  Not all of it is of you, but you do show up somewhere in most of the reels.  We were always together, so it was impossible for you not to have.  It's kind of funny cause you almost never wanted to be on camera, yet there you are.  For your 25th birthday I even made you a ten minute movie of all the times you'd told me to get that camera the hell out of your face, and it had you laughing for days.

So here I sit with no one but my movie friends to keep me company.  It's better that way; I'm not ready to face the living yet, not when you're not among them.  There goes a shot of Angel and Collins dancing.  Put on another reel and there's you tickling April.  Cut to Maureen and Joanne fighting.  Zoom in on Mimi's laughing face.  Another Maureen and Joanne fight, then they're making up—or making out, depending on your view—and a quick shot of you making gagging faces in the background.

New reel, this one unmarked.  Zoom in on your face.  No, not a zoom in; you're trying to take the camera from me.  I appear to be putting up a valiant fight, but the camera is ripped from my hands anyway.  You hand it to someone and step back and I can see where we are.  The park.  Central Park, actually, for our yearly excursion across the city.  Suddenly, I remember the day as if I was living it, and I hear the dialogue to the film, though there's no sound except the clicking of the reel running through the machine.

"Close on Mark," you said, making fun of my habit of dictating camera actions.  "Always the filmmaker and never the film.  Well, no more!"  Then I'd made fun of you back for being a total dipshit.

After a short scuffle, friendly pushing and shoving and a quick punch in the arm, we ended up smiling brightly into the camera, squinting to block the sun.  Close on Mark and Roger: companions, roommates, best friends, together till the very end.  I beam at whoever is filming, stretching upwards to level the difference in our heights.  You smile at me fondly and ruffle my hair.  Zoom in on your arm that wraps around my shoulder and pulls at me and becomes an impromptu hug.  "My best friend," you mouth to the camera.

Fade to black.  End credits.  No more movies today.


End file.
